by Kay Kerr
Love, Erin
4 September
Dear Rudy,
Sometimes I don’t think about you at all. Like, if you were to look inside my head on a certain day, you’d think I was the eldest of two children, going about my business, caring for and thinking of only Ollie and myself. I don’t say that to hurt you. I suppose I’m just trying to paint a proper picture of how things are. Okay, maybe somewhere, deep down, I want to hurt you a little. That wouldn’t be wrong.
Did I tell you Oliver wants to get a dog? He’s really obsessed with it—he wants a little brown sausage dog, and he wants to call it Rudy. I think that’s cute but also kind of weird. The name part, that is. I think the sausage-dog part is only cute. Sometimes he talks about ‘Rudy’ and we all think he’s talking about you, but he’s actually talking about what he wants to do with his dog when he gets it, like this morning. He piped up over his bowl of Weetbix: ‘Rudy loves dressing up like Batman and Robin with me.’
Mum looked surprised—I think he caught her off guard with it. She said, ‘Yes, baby, he loves you so much.’
Then Oliver said something about needing to cut a hole in the costume for his tail, and Mum looked confused. I reminded her of the sausage-dog thing and she looked relieved.
‘A hole for his tail, of course,’ she said.
Mum says she doesn’t want the commitment of a dog. As if she isn’t already tied to this life and this house, three children, a husband and a mortgage. I think it would be nice to have a little animal here, and maybe I wouldn’t move out if we had a dog. I’d have to help look after it and take it for walks with Oliver, because he’s too little to do it on his own. Mum is probably a bit nervous ever since we had that cat Daisy before Oliver was born. She was a pretty cat, but remember how she always seemed to want to escape, like she was angry to be living with us. I don’t blame her, I guess. We were pretty intense when we’d dress her up in dolls clothes and make her put on shows. Then, when she got hit by that car I got so obsessed with dying and death. I remember playing funerals with my dolls and telling old people they were going to die soon. I told Mum’s aunt Marilyn she was going to die right before she did, remember? Or maybe you don’t. Mum was really close to Marilyn, and I felt like Mum thought I’d killed her, even though that’s ridiculous because a six-year-old can’t cause lung cancer. But there was a bad feeling there—I can still feel it if I think back hard enough, like my words had big consequences. Maybe we shouldn’t get a dog. Or maybe I’ll get a cat when I move out, and do it right this time.
I forget sometimes that some things are my choice. Or they will be soon anyway. I can choose what universities I apply for and what courses, or even if I apply at all. I’ll choose where I’m going to live and with whom, and what I’ll eat for dinner. I’ll choose the people I talk to at uni. I’ll choose what I wear every single day. It’s a lot of choosing. I like the idea of all of those choices, but I don’t feel qualified to make them.
You were making choices long before you were my age, and way before you were qualified. You made bad choices and brash choices and short-sighted choices and angry choices and silly choices. Not all the time; you made good ones too. I just wish I felt as confident as you, or as excited about making choices. Maybe I never will, or maybe it’ll happen slowly with each new choice.
After Schoolies, that’s it: choice city, population me. I’m worried Dee is going to choose something different from me and I’ll be left here in my own hesitation. School is so easy in the way there are no choices, when I think about it, and I’m only really thinking about that now, two months before finishing.
Rudy, I know you didn’t choose for this to happen, but I wonder, if you could, what would you choose for yourself now? And what would you choose for me?
Love, Erin
5 September
Dear Rudy,
Have you ever had that feeling like you’re going to be found out, like you’re in the wrong place or doing the wrong thing and you’re just waiting for people to realise? Maybe you feel like that right now. Or maybe it’s more like when you were in TAFE and you were failing your subjects, and you waited way too long to tell Mum and Dad about it. I don’t know how you thought they wouldn’t notice, or maybe you weren’t thinking ahead at all. But it’s a weirdly anxious feeling, isn’t it? I mean, not anxious like anxiety. It’s like you can never settle into being because you’re waiting to be pulled out of it. That’s how I feel, anyway, especially at school. That’s why I kind of like exams even though other people really hate them.
The QCS exam is so much weirder than a normal exam don’t you think? It’s strange we even have it, when the other states only have to prepare for final exams once. But for us pineapple-state kids, there are two whole days of testing instead of tests spaced out in our normal timetable, which I like but most people find quite boring and mentally draining.
Mostly though it’s the way the teachers act about it that I find so strange. We started the first testing day today with a breakfast provided by the school, to ‘help us prepare’. I don’t know if it’s all schools, but ours gave us cereal and pancakes. Pancakes are delicious, but pretty impractical. I mean it is not exactly ideal for seven straight hours contained in one room is it—that much sugar and starch. Protein wasn’t even an option. Maybe it is just my body that is overly sensitive to sugar in the morning, but it seems like serving red cordial at a fifth birthday party and then wondering why no one will sit still for pass the parcel. I have eggs every day before I come to school, so I skipped the sugar meal and drank coffee instead. Caffeine has been proven to enhance your mental performance in short bursts—I have one most days before school.
Once we finished our sugar binge, we lined up in alphabetical order with all of our supplies in a clear plastic sleeve, sort of like at the airport when they make you pull out all the liquids in your hand luggage. You need to have:
Approved calculator (wiped, with no cheats saved on it)
Black ink pens
Corrector fluid
Drawing compass
Eraser
Highlighter
Pencils (2B)
Pencil sharpener
Protractor
Ruler.
There were inevitably people who had forgotten a sleeve, or some other supplies, so we stood around waiting for them to sort it out. I don’t know how they could forget, when we were given a very clear list more than a month ago, but maybe they’d had a rough morning or something. I know I struggle to follow the rules that aren’t written, like the social rule that says it’s rude to be honest when someone asks you if they look like they’ve put on weight, but it seems even weirder to me that people can’t follow the rules that are actually written on a piece of paper and handed out, like the clear-plastic-sleeve rule. Because of the alphabetical order I was behind Ben Whitaker, who was telling horrible jokes and then laughing at them nervously when no one else did. They weren’t bad in that funny cheesy way you tell jokes, though. No, they were nasty. I’d rather be quiet like I am than tell bad jokes. A bad joke is way worse than no joke. Definitely. Sometimes if I want to join in a conversation about jokes I’ll tell your joke as if it’s my own, the one about the zoo with only one animal. People always laugh, but never as much as they laughed when you told it.
We filed into a classroom and sat at the evenly spaced desks while a teacher patrolled. There was so much angst among the teachers about the possibility of someone cheating, but I don’t even know how you would begin to try. Or why you would bother. The test is supposed to be an accurate assessment of your knowledge in comparison to everyone else in your year level, so if you cheat you’re cheating the school and the whole education system out of a truthful result. I hope I’m in the top 10 per cent of our school, and I think I will be. Dee says I can sound conceited when I talk about my marks, but I’m just being honest about how I’ve scored so far. And this test is meant to measure our ‘core skills’, so it’s most likely to be similar to the average of all o
ur other marks.
The point our teachers stressed to us above all else was that we needed to make sure we coloured the A, B, C or D oval in the answers booklet all the way to the edges. Don’t half colour them, and don’t even think about colouring outside the lines. As if the whole fiasco was a test of your ability to manoeuvre a 2B pencil as opposed to measuring your potential for tertiary education. Oh, and the pencil had to be a 2B. If the teachers were to be believed, you would basically end up flipping burgers for the rest of your life if you didn’t bring the correct pencil.
We started at precisely 9.05 am. Some people coloured fast and furiously, others were slower and more measured. There is something meditative about focusing all your energy on answering questions like that. If only the rest of my life could be as structured and planned as these two days. There is no room for embarrassment, awkwardness or making the wrong choice. I mean, you can choose the wrong answer, but answering the questions is still the only choice.
I know you didn’t do as well on QCS as you did on your driving exam. Mum said you were a ‘circle trying to fit into a square hole’ at school. I think I’m a square when it comes to learning, and a circle when it comes to everything else. Mum tells herself a lot of stories to make herself feel better though, so maybe you weren’t a circle or a square. Maybe there aren’t particular-shaped holes to fit into to begin with.
After the exam I walked to the bus stop with Dee and Jessica Rabbit, who were busy making plans for tonight. Jessica Rabbit said, ‘It’s just a small gathering, a little group of us blowing off some steam after that ridiculous exam,’ in a way that made it seem like she didn’t want me to come.
Dee was sincere when she said, ‘Come, Erin, it’ll be fun. Jess’s parents are away and they have the best stocked bar. It’s probably warm enough to go for a swim too.’ Her eyes move around a lot when she’s being insincere and they weren’t so I could tell she meant it.
Usually I would go to anything I was invited to with Dee, but today I didn’t feel like it. I told her I had to study. Instead of feeling anxiety about what she would think, or worrying about what I’d be missing, I felt relief.
It’s strange that saying no to my friend would bring so much relief. If I don’t want to hang out with someone does that mean they are not really my friend? You always seemed to want to be with your friends. You liked them more than me and Mum and Dad and Ollie, or at least it felt like that. Maybe I am feeling this way because of what month we’re in. There’s not much I can see myself jumping at right now. I’ve got rocks in my stomach and I’m only half-tuned in all the time. Things seem to be happening behind a pane of glass, so I can see them but I can’t reach out and touch them. I don’t know. I wish we could sit down together and talk about this stuff.
Love, Erin
6 September
Dear Rudy,
I slept like I was eight last night, deep and peaceful. I slept like the last year hadn’t happened, like I’d been lulled to sleep by the softest voice on an island with the freshest air. Like there were no choices or rules or cringe lists or anything. I just slept.
I was excited to be back in the test room today. I’m sure I was the only one who was. Pale Jessica started crying. I guess she was overwhelmed by the pressure. I understand that feeling of being so overwhelmed you have to cry, but testing is not something that makes me feel like that. As she was taken away to sick bay, we filed into the G-block classrooms and took our places at the grey plastic desks. Dee is in the next room because of her last name, as we are arranged alphabetically by surnames. She said she thinks she did all right on the first day. I hope she does better than all right today.
You know how Dad tells stories about his school years, the ones that seem full of disdain for the level of privilege our generation has? ‘I walked ten kilometres to school every day, rain, hail or shine and we couldn’t afford school shoes.’ That kind of thing. As much as we roll our eyes at the escalating exaggeration of those stories, the one thing I am jealous of is a wooden desk. It seems Austen-esque to be able to sit at a wooden bench and write stories and read. I’ve probably romanticised it to a point where classrooms are filled with leather-bound books, ceiling-height bookshelves and Persian rugs, but I know wooden desks and blackboards have to be better than the prison-grey desks and whiteboards we have. Carving your crush’s name into a wooden desk, preserved forever. How beautiful. It sure beats using a metal compass to scratch ‘fuck’ in the plastic penholder, like someone had done to the desk I was sitting at today.
That’s really the only time Dad talks about being young, and I’m starting to think I don’t know him, not really. Did he tell you more? I think I know Mum, I definitely know you, and I know as much of Oliver as he’s become so far. Dad is just Dad to me. Everything else before you were born and he became part of a family is blank. I know he played football for a time, but did he love it? Did football make his heart beat fast and his mind feel clear, or was it just something he did to pass the time? What about his relationship before Mum? That was obviously pretty serious. Why did it end? What were his parents like as parents? I wonder about Dad a lot, and I try to fill in the blanks. The best I’ve come up with is that his life was hard before Mum, and she made it softer for him. We’re his cushioning, and sometimes he pushes against us, but mostly he’s happy we’re here. Those are the lines I’m tracing for Dad, anyway, so I hope they are the real ones.
The second half of the test was a writing exercise with the theme ‘sight’. I wrote a story about a person navigating their day, in very descriptive style, ending with the twist that he was blind. Once I had finished my story, I watched a fly doing its little dance around the classroom for the remaining half an hour. It zipped up and down until it found a landing spot it liked, then dived, landed and rubbed its little legs together in glee. I’d hate to be a fly because people loathe them so much, always shooing them away and trying to swat them. That would be a real self-esteem killer. Skyscraper Simon was sitting behind me so I smiled and waved when I turned around to watch the fly. I know that doesn’t really make up for a whole year of not talking to someone or looking them in the eye, but maybe it’s enough to say, ‘I know I have been shitty and I’m sorry.’ He smiled back, so maybe it was.
I am sad to be done with QCS, but formal is tomorrow night and I can’t wait to get dressed up and maybe dance with Mitch and smile in pictures like the ones Mum has of you. I hope it’s as fun as you said yours was. I hope it’s fun in a way I’ll enjoy, not just fun in a way you or Dee or Jessica Rabbit would like and I wouldn’t.
Your orange tux was a bad call, by the way. No one said it to your face, but these letters are making me brave, so I’m saying it now. Mum will have that photo on the mantel forever and ever, and you will be immortalised in a bright orange suit that made you look like a Cheezel. You’d probably love the thought of that.
Love, Erin
8 September
FUUUUCKKKK YOUUUUUUUUU.
Now read that again, Rudy, and imagine it’s me screaming at you. Most of the time I have my head around you not being here, or if not quite around it, I can kind of acknowledge that it’s the reality now. But last night, on formal night, I didn’t want to acknowledge it. I wanted to rage against it, I wanted to pick up the phone and scream at you, and to know that you could hear me and you understood that it was not okay. I wanted someone to blame and I wanted that to be you. I wanted to hurt you for hurting me, for hurting all of us. I wanted to tell you how broken you’d left us. I didn’t get to do any of that, so those feelings stayed in my stomach instead, festering and probably leeching into my blood. You did this. You ruined everything. No one wants to say that because we’re all too busy missing you and wishing you’d come back. It’s hard to be angry with the person you love and miss, but I guess that’s all part of it. But really, I mean it, fuck you.
Yeah, I was going to send that letter as is, I was so mad. But I’m feeling a little better now and I have more I want to say. Formal wasn’t fu
n in a way I enjoyed, just so you know. It was another one of those things that are fun for normal people and I hope will be fun for me, but then it just wasn’t and that made me feel so many feelings about not being one of those people who find the fun thing fun. It would be so much less exhausting to just find the fun things fun than to find them stressful and disappointing and to prefer to do things that other people find boring like work in an old women’s clothing shop.
‘Formal’ is a funny name for a night of getting dressed up isn’t it. It would be like calling a picnic a ‘casual’ or a wedding a ‘black tie’. Did you know ‘prom’ is short for ‘promenade dance’? So I guess calling it prom would make more sense than calling it formal, but prom sounds so American—and like it should happen on TV and not in real life. I have been so busy losing my old job and getting a new one and keeping my cringe list tally down and practising for my driving test and working on being nicer to myself and trying to have a breakthrough with my outbursts and eating donuts and finishing QCS exams that I hadn’t thought about formal until it was happening. I should have enjoyed the anticipation more because now it’s done and there’s nothing else like formal until you get married, which seems pretty unlikely for me.
Anticipation might be the best part of all of the big things, for me anyway. It’s when I imagine myself in the moment and I let myself act like I’m having the time of my life. I don’t imagine outbursts or jumbled thoughts or saying the wrong thing. I imagine a me where those things don’t even exist. But then I live the big thing, and I do something embarrassing and the memory of the big thing becomes something to make me cringe instead of something to be excited about.
Mum made my formal dress. She’d been working on it since the beginning of the year, and every time I tried it on she clicked her tongue and put pins in it and found more parts she wanted to change. It was blue, ‘to bring out my eyes’ she said, and by the time I got to wear it, it was very beautiful. The skirt was light and swishy, and stopped just before it reached the ground, which I think Mum did on purpose because she knows how easily I trip.